Leaderless Debian • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaderless Debian

#81

Post by stirfrykitty » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

orev wrote: post #70

liuw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted you. Yes, APT was the major reason I chose Debian 15 years ago. It was much better than RPM without YUM (it wasn't part of RH systems back then IIRC). Nowadays the competitive edge of APT could have diminished, but I never looked else where because I have been quite happy with APT.

Yum has been around for so long that I really can’t believe people still bring this up. Even a decade after yum came around, I still heard Debian people comparing “rpm” vs “apt”, which is a completely apples to oranges comparison. I can only assume that those Debian people were so out of touch with other distros that their opinions could not be trusted.

Yum has been largely replaced by dnf, which is far and away better. Despite being a Debian/Slackware fan since 1998, I do find dnf quite nice. It's still a fair bit slower than apt or pacman, but it's clean and easy to use. Slackware actually has package management systems, but I encourage people to learn how to do things the old school way so they can learn Linux. If you know Slackware, you understand how Linux truly works. Package managers are great for production systems, especially stuff like apt and for the odd systems with software hangups, apt pinning.

Re: Leaderless Debian

#82

Post by linuxftw » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

aargh_aargh wrote: post #55

ilovecaching wrote: post #32

Controversial opinion warning, and I would love to hear some counterpoints outside of my thought bubble. I've never understood the appeal of Debian or Ubuntu, or I guess I don't understand why people would invest so much time in them compared to Fedora and Redhat. In actual buisness dealings Redhat has always led the way in enterprise (whole data centers), kernel development (a bunch of the maintainers work for them…

Why Debian? It values freedom: A) of software - DFSG B) of decisionmaking - Debian constitution C) of choice Stemming from that, there are the following advantages I value (opinion ahead): * both installed program and source is just an apt command away (A, C) * has a large repository of software (historically largest; nowadays it's still among the largest) (A, C) * security support for stable release for the whole ar…

True community distro is what I was going to say as well. I view Debian as 'plain old linux.'

My fear though, is Debian is not going to be able to keep up with the pace of commercial linux distributions. Things are moving at light speed these days.

Re: Leaderless Debian

#83

Post by linuxftw » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

baldfat wrote: post #2

I know how loved Debian has been for the community and all that has been built on it but as a user I kind of always felt that Debian was always doing their own thing, at their own pace and their own requirements. Maybe this is a sign that that way of running a Linux community is over? We really have a fairly robust ecosystem and development has become much more refined? I might be missing the inner politics of the co…

I think the linux community is now less about the distro, and more about what runs on the distro.

The latest trends in software development (containers, kubernetes) are just moving too fast for Debian to keep up, IMO. I think we're going to see the rise of 'purpose-built kubernetes' distros.

Re: Leaderless Debian

#84

Post by servilio » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

ilovecaching wrote: post #42

oblio wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, for a long time, deb/apt were way superior to what rpm/yum offered. Heck, Debian had apt way earlier than Red Hat had yum. If anything, Red Hat should have adopted apt. In terms of sheer number of dumb competing initiatives, Ubuntu > Red Hat > Debian.

So I've heard this before, and I really want to know what are the things that make apt better? The only thing I can see is that yum was pretty slow (dnf seems to be marginally better). Otherwise, the rpm package format seems pretty on par with deb and apt seems like a super crusty interface with multiple commands and stuff.

I will one thing: apt pinning[1]. It allows you to tweak the way apt choses the version to install, and allows you through a configuration text file to give higher (or lower) priority to specific releases, repository components, repositories, package names, etc.

I started using it before 2005, before backports was a thing, and it was a lifesaver for my desktops, as I usually wanted to use newer versions from testing or unstable.

[1] https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en....

Re: Leaderless Debian

#85

Post by stirfrykitty » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

ilovecaching wrote: post #64

porker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because once getting started ~20 years ago (first with FreeBSD, then dabbled in Slackware, then Debian => Linux) re-learning the location of config files is not a priority and indeed I would avoid like the plague. Remembering slight syntax changes between distros / CLI switches that work on one but not another / similes (does this platform use "remove" or "uninstall"?) is the bane of my life. Also I have never got on…

I guess that's why I am sticking with Redhat. I don't really want to maintain two ecosystems worth of cognitive load, and I have yet to work for a company that didn't highly value RHEL skills, whereas Ubuntu has only been valued at help desks for desktop support. Also, the Redhat docs have been great training material, and I think they are worth paying money for.

What you say is true, but this is changing. Red Hat became valuable as a set of skills, because they developed a certification system that is provable. Those are not paper tiger certs. They are earned. While I don't personally have one, most of the people I know who work on CentOS/RHEL for a living are quite capable with other distros as well.

Debian/Ubuntu are used in surprising places, though, as you likely know. Ubuntu and Raspbian on a Pi are great at prototyping stuff. I've used Raspberry Pis for professional projects, and at my last job, a couple of Pis running Pi-hole to blacklist ads, beacons, and trackers for a public library that didn't have a lot of money in their budget for a more "proper" solution.

Re: Leaderless Debian

#86

Post by stirfrykitty » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

craigsmansion wrote: post #66

ilovecaching wrote: post #32

Controversial opinion warning, and I would love to hear some counterpoints outside of my thought bubble. I've never understood the appeal of Debian or Ubuntu, or I guess I don't understand why people would invest so much time in them compared to Fedora and Redhat. In actual buisness dealings Redhat has always led the way in enterprise (whole data centers), kernel development (a bunch of the maintainers work for them…

> I'm not really sure who the target audience of debian is. A part of their core users are admins that don't get paid by the hour. And since we're being controversial, any good admin should run debian (or maybe ubuntu) if they had the choice, if only because you can run the same system on your laptop and on the servers. Watching someone manage their Redhat/centos servers from OSX (or even Windows) is just painful to…

Debian is far and away the most stable distro out there, arguably more stable than RHEL. Many people and organizations, including serious research facilities use Debian for this very reason. It's also free as in freedom/free as in beer. Best of both worlds. Scientists already have the chops to run Linux, and Debian allows easy tinkering and customizable approaches than does RHEL/CentOS. It's also easier to upgrade and manage. An in-place dist-upgrade is a breeze in Debian. Not so with RHEL/CentOS. I've done several of both, and Debian wins here hands down.

Re: Leaderless Debian

#87

Post by twic » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

craigsmansion wrote: post #66

ilovecaching wrote: post #32

Controversial opinion warning, and I would love to hear some counterpoints outside of my thought bubble. I've never understood the appeal of Debian or Ubuntu, or I guess I don't understand why people would invest so much time in them compared to Fedora and Redhat. In actual buisness dealings Redhat has always led the way in enterprise (whole data centers), kernel development (a bunch of the maintainers work for them…

> I'm not really sure who the target audience of debian is. A part of their core users are admins that don't get paid by the hour. And since we're being controversial, any good admin should run debian (or maybe ubuntu) if they had the choice, if only because you can run the same system on your laptop and on the servers. Watching someone manage their Redhat/centos servers from OSX (or even Windows) is just painful to…

> any good admin should run debian (or maybe ubuntu) if they had the choice, if only because you can run the same system on your laptop and on the servers

Why is Debian special in that respect? I once worked at a place where we ran CentOS on our workstations, and the correseponding RHEL on servers, for exactly this reason.

Re: Leaderless Debian

#88

Post by asark » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #37

oblio wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, for a long time, deb/apt were way superior to what rpm/yum offered. Heck, Debian had apt way earlier than Red Hat had yum. If anything, Red Hat should have adopted apt. In terms of sheer number of dumb competing initiatives, Ubuntu > Red Hat > Debian.

I’ve never understood the pure love for apt. Ports/pkg is better. Gentoo’s package manager is better. Even yast was better (imho). Once I needed a package from an external repository, apt has almost always fallen down into a pit of duplicate and incompatible dependencies. Maybe it’s better now, but I was burned long ago and never looked back.

> Ports/pkg is better. Gentoo’s package manager is better.

Strongly agree. Gentoo's Portage is the best experience I've had with a package manager on Linux.

My package management observations, as someone who's been using them for... a while, now.

Best experiences: Portage on Gentoo (lots of options; many packages; fast; reliable unless I broke it doing something stupid; maintaining a high level of control over the system at a low level is the only way I've ever managed to make Linux behave itself), Homebrew on MacOS (great package selection; casks are wonderful; outstanding CLI; keeping user packages away from the core system has really grown on me)

Middling: apt on Ubuntu and Debian (OK but increasingly feels dirty after getting used to Homebrew and keeping my user packages separate from the system; breaks "on its own" more often than Portage did, though still rarely; package selection just OK)

Bad: Yum/RPM on Red Hat, Fedora, and long ago, RPM on Mandrake (sloooooooowwwwwwwww and RPMs seemed to break constantly back when I used them), Macports on MacOS (slow; broke so bad the easiest thing to do was to delete the whole dir and start over about once a quarter; limited package selection)

Incidentally, Gentoo's OpenRC is the only Linux init system I've ever used that I liked and felt like I actually understood well enough to use it without apprehension or constantly needing to check documentation.

I like the idea of Nix and tried NixOS once but after an hour or so of following a guide and troubleshooting couldn't get X running so gave it up as "for those with more free time than me—try again in a few years".

Re: Leaderless Debian

#89

Post by ilovecaching » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

stirfrykitty wrote: post #80

ilovecaching wrote: post #32

Controversial opinion warning, and I would love to hear some counterpoints outside of my thought bubble. I've never understood the appeal of Debian or Ubuntu, or I guess I don't understand why people would invest so much time in them compared to Fedora and Redhat. In actual buisness dealings Redhat has always led the way in enterprise (whole data centers), kernel development (a bunch of the maintainers work for them…

Because Debian is not owned by a corporation. Who knows what IBM will do with Red Hat. We all know that massive corps that buy smaller ones usually don't treat the smaller corps very well. They often buy them for the patent portfolio or tech, merge it in or kill it outright after a time. While Red Hat has determined (sadly) the overall direction of Linux development with things like systemd (don't get anyone started…

But most of the linux kernel hackers run Fedora (Linus) or work for Redhat (Dave). Linux specifically uses Fedora because it just works. I'm also not sure what you mean by faster? There's a lot of factors in play in terms of OS efficiency and benchmarking is hard.

Like I said, I do think that Ubuntu dominates small business, but large businesses still focus on RHEL. Cloud has just made numbers like number of installs easier to track. I wouldn't necessarily say that number of installs really even matters compared to what those installs are being used for, and how much clout Canonical has in the Linux community versus Redhat. Redhat directly employees a ton of critical people in standard Linux projects like freedesktop etc.

Re: Leaderless Debian

#90

Post by ilovecaching » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

stirfrykitty wrote: post #85

ilovecaching wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's why I am sticking with Redhat. I don't really want to maintain two ecosystems worth of cognitive load, and I have yet to work for a company that didn't highly value RHEL skills, whereas Ubuntu has only been valued at help desks for desktop support. Also, the Redhat docs have been great training material, and I think they are worth paying money for.

What you say is true, but this is changing. Red Hat became valuable as a set of skills, because they developed a certification system that is provable. Those are not paper tiger certs. They are earned. While I don't personally have one, most of the people I know who work on CentOS/RHEL for a living are quite capable with other distros as well. Debian/Ubuntu are used in surprising places, though, as you likely know. U…

I don't disagree, although I think the underlying OS is becoming less important. I'm thinking about Kubernetes, which on GCloud runs on top of a modified Ubuntu. I do also see debian being used more in the embedded/low power space. But RHEL and friends seem to win in the high performance market. I also see a weirdly large amount of FreeBSD and BSD derivatives.